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Adobe Not Worried About the Future of Flash
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe company man John Dowdell isn't worried about the future of Flash. He writes in his company blog, 'There's really no "HTML vs Flash" war. There are sure people inciting to create such a war, and individual developers may have strong practical reasons to choose one technology over another, but at corporate levels that drive strategy, all delivery channels are important Adobe territory, whether SWF or HTML or video or documents or paper or ebook or e-mag or film or packaging or whatever. Adobe profits by making it easier for creatives to reach their audiences. We're on the verge of a disruptive change that, I think, will dwarf that of the World Wide Web fifteen years ago. It was great back then when any wealthy person with a workstation in a wired environment could easily reach any creative's webpage. With these cheaper devices we'll be reaching far more people, and with pocket devices we'll be reaching them throughout the day instead of just when "logged-on." The WWW was merely a pale precursor of the excitement we're going to see, I think.' It's interesting to note that he talks about the World Wide Web in the past tense. I find it instructive as to Adobe's perspective. Personally, I'm not worried about the future of Flash either. I don't think it has one."
Personally, I'm not worried about the future of Flash either. I don't think it has one.
Except that it's pain in the ass to create Flash-like games with HTML5. You have to use all kinds of hacks to accomplish that, while designers and Flash game creators are familiar and love Flash authoring tools.
Flash isn't just about video, even if it's the most talked part of it here on slashdot.
Flash is out of luck with Steve Jobs.
It'll take a while, because IE 9 doesn't support XP, but it'll happen. Flash dies once XP dies.
Microsoft would like to fully control the interfaces, but when they fail at that they'd at least like to stop any other company from controlling the interfaces. Microsoft will settle for open standards as required to kill things like flash.
We can thank Adobe for IE 9 getting SVG and HTML 5 video support.
then release Flash for the G1 already.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Once someone ports Badgers to HTML5 Canvas, then it'll be safe to put Flash to sleep.
Corporate spokesmen are the Baghdad Bobs of capitalism: there to tell you everything is going great, there is no enemy in sight for hundreds of miles, if there is an enemy he was routed by our glorious products. Up until the moment the spokesman himself is laid off.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
When you have to explain that you're not scared about a trend that could hurt your product, it means you ARE scared of the trend. :-)
Like there is to block flash.
I do not want any video type stream to load when i am going to a web page until I have made the decision to watch it.
That is not an anti flash statement because I do make the choice to watch a lot of flash. But it is at my discretion and not the web page designers.
If it wasn't for flash block, I would spend all day waiting for news sites to load instead of actually reading the news. I hardly ever watch the flash on those types of sites, and they are probably the worse offenders of loading up the crap flash. Now other sites, which by the nature of the site presents its content via flash. yes, I do watch it. But, only after I have clicked the specific flash object I want.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
When you really look at it, there's no reason that Adobe shouldn't embrace HTML 5. Fundamentally, maintaining a cross-platform plug-in is not a profit center for them, it's a cost. They don't make money on the plug-ins, they make money on the Creative Suite product which allows designers to create animations, games, and the like easily. All this work of maintaining their own actionscript standards and standard library just serves to make their pay products more useful.
Imagine for a moment that at some time in the near future, Adobe has a new option on the menu "Export to HTML5". Would this make their product less useful? Of course not. Widespread adoption of HTML 5 means that their product can now be used to create content for even more devices, including several, like the iPhone, from which they have previously been locked out. And it wouldn't even be surprising if over time they transitioned entirely to HTML 5, giving up the work involved in maintaining Flash. They probably won't do this in the short run, but in the long run, it's entirely plausible.
I'm sure some people will point out that the move to HTML 5 opens them up to more competitors, and it does. But they've already got competitors even with the Flash ecosystem. There are a variety of ways to make swfs, including swftools, FlashDevelop, and the free Actionscript compiler which Adobe itself released as part of the Flex SDK. There are even a few other pay products out there. So, essentially, they already are in a market where there are a bunch of other tools which are cheaper but either can't produce complex content or require a bunch of coding to produce similar content. If they switch over to HTML5, they will likely be in the same boat, just in a bigger lake. Sure they'll be competing with DreamWeaver or whoever, but they'll have a clear and immediate advantage when it comes to "Flash-like" stuff such as animations and games.
So in summary, if they manage the transition properly, moving towards HTML5 means less costs and a bigger market. That sounds to me like a pretty clear win.
Here's how it will go down: "Flash CS4 - Now with HTML5!"
They will fall back on their design environment to create HTML 5 compliant applications and continue to sell to the more design-oriented customer. So of course they aren't worried. They'll just use HTML 5 output and sell to their already established base.
I couldn't care less what new gizmos and glitz the web has ... what I care about is that if I create apps, just like documents and databases, I want to still be able to access and use them 20 or 40 years from now without recoding and reformatting them. The gold rush is over. What I want now is bulletproof base of archival-quality standards, not ones that reinvent themselves every product cycle.
It surprises me that in all of the discussions about how HTML5 is going to murder Flash, the one thing that everyone overlooks is the exact reason why Flash continues to be popular - Cross-browser consistency.
I mean, right now, you cannot expect any of the five browsers to display CSS2 consistently, and that spec has been around since 1998. Why is it that everyone expects HTML5 to be perfect out of the box on every platform?
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
I don't know, when all kinds of geeks are crying "Flash is dead", and an Adobe rep comes out and says "We've faced worse, we aren't worried" I don't think you can automatically assume they are worried.
Basically, it tells you nothing, because you can't just sit there and be silent - that will be more of a condemnation than anything. If you're scared shitless, you say "We aren't worried", and if you're not worried you also say "We aren't worried".
Basically you can't read much of anything into it, and I have to point out that Adobe is extremely good at making their products the de facto standard. Probably the biggest knock against HTML5 is it is not going to be nearly as consistent as Flash across browser versions, the next biggest would be the fact that Flash will always be in a better position to adjust to the market - H264 video is a perfect example, Flash has had it for two years now, IE has it for HTML5 but Firefox apparently won't have it for HTML5 (it's a licensing issue). So if you want to be sure everyone can see your H264 encoded video, you use Flash, not HTML5 at all.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I find it instructive as to Adobe's perspective.
That would be a bad idea.
John Dowdell is a "user relations" guy at Adobe. He answers to users on support forums, writes a blog on Adobe topics and reads customer feedback at Adobe.
He doesn't speak for Adobe's strategy, nor is his opinion to be considered that of Adobe. In fact it says so on his blog: "Views are my own".
Plus, Adobe's been saying for the past few years "there's no HTML vs Flash" war namely since they don't want to position Flash as an HTML alternative (which is stupid in 2010) but as necessary extension to HTML.
You see? It's subtle. HTML won't replace Flash, but you still need Flash together with HTML in your browser and your mobile device (by the way: Flash 10.1 coming to a cellphones pretty soon). It's just another step in a survival strategy that will keep Flash from becoming irrelevant.
All their latest features focus on the unique strengths of a proprietary binary plugin that a public standard like HTML can't deliver quickly, or at all, which is: fully consistent performance across platforms, quick innovation, highly specialized features (such as pixel shaders, is this coming in HTML5? No. I thought so). We need that ingredient too, next to HTML5, to form a healthy ecosystem on the web, as much as some people hate to admit it.
But John Dowdell still doesn't speak for Adobe's strategy, so accept his blog for what it is.
Flash exists because there is a gap between making disgusting prefabbed square forms, and fluid, interesting and deeply creative content; Something that tells your customers and competitors "hey, we have style!"
The problem is, we don't care if you have "style" or not. When I go to your site, and I can't read the text because of all the pseudo-scroll widgets and fake tabs, you failed to reach your target audience. Style is simple elegance. The perfect web site doesn't need drop shadows and background music -- the content speaks for itself.
Flash makes the web interesting, it's what powers the little widgets you find on the sides of blogs, it's what makes the Most Interesting Man in the World interesting, it's what lets me tell the designers "yes! I can render our company's portfolio in 3D"
Oh my God! You're everything that's wrong with the internet! People HATE those stupid widgets on the sides of blogs -- in fact most of us use Flash blockers specifically for things like that. Anyone who's not a marketing weenie avoids that sort of thing as much as their technical prowess (or lack thereof) allows them to.
We don't care about stupid online beer commercials. We don't want to see your company's portfolio in 3D. I'm quite sure it's no more compelling that way -- only slower, uglier, and looks like crap on my mobile device, if it renders at all. Content is king, not the stupid fluff you're promoting. Flash is the realm of porn browsers and morons, and the content created using it clearly caters to this subsection of online society. I for one will be more than happy when it is banished to the realm of popularity where Java applets live these days.
- Vincit qui patitur.